The Science of Breakfast: or Who Needs a Smoke Alarm Anyway?
by Kryptaria
Summary: For a genius, there were certain things Q couldn't be trusted to do unsupervised, starting with anything at all, until he'd had his first cup of tea. Unfortunately, Q was very good at sneaking out of bed. - Co-written with BootsnBlossoms
1. First Morning

First mornings were always awkward.

Morning was the time for regrets and embarrassment, sometimes hidden under the offer of coffee or toast. Or morning was the time for clinging, desperate declarations of eternal devotion and talk of love and marriage. Bond had yet to determine a correlation between the quality of the previous night and the morning-after reactions, or he might have actually tried to be a bit _worse_ in bed. If nothing else, awkward coffee and toast was better than stopping for a takeaway muffin on the way back to his flat.

Awkward first mornings were the reason he preferred to spend them in someone else's flat. Comfortable as his bed was, at least spending a first night in _their_ bed made for an easy escape the following morning. The somewhat dramatic steps required to throw out a clingy bed partner tended to upset the neighbours.

As he quickly rinsed his mouth with some convenient mouthwash, he wondered what it would be this time. The 'I like you, but I'm really not gay' line, perhaps. Or maybe 'I hope we can be professional about this and continue to work together'. He didn't think Q was the emotional type, so it probably wouldn't be a strategic mention of civil partnership laws, but Bond had learned not to predict too closely. Flattering as marriage proposals were, his last had been at gunpoint (he still had no idea where she'd been hiding the .25), and he'd had to kill her.

He buttoned up yesterday's shirt, tucked it in, and walked out of the bathroom, expecting to find Q still looking drowsy, rumpled, and adorable in the bed they'd shared last night. The blankets were on the floor, though, in a fabric trail that pointed out the door and down the hall. Bond followed the logical conclusion and found what might have been Q in the kitchen, if not for the fact that he seemed to be... well, partially undead.

Maybe not even partially. Maybe wholly undead. Then again, it could have been the flour.

"I..." Q said in a tone that Bond hadn't heard from his Quartermaster yet. It wasn't defeated, or annoyed — it was _dazed_, perhaps even confused, and Bond was a bit put out that such a tone could be inspired not by what they'd done last night (which was admittedly fantastic) but by... _this_. "I saw in a movie once where the guy brought the chick brioche in bed."

So that was what _this_ was supposed to be. Bond was no baker, but he was fairly certain that bread-making involved less of a floury puddle and more of an actual dough. As he stepped into the kitchen, a bit of the puddle slipped free of the countertop and dripped onto the floor, drawing Bond's eye down.

"You're naked," he observed after a moment's debate. The flour, he decided, didn't count. "Perhaps this would be better accomplished if you had your glasses?"

Q reached up to touch the corner of his eye, smudging a bit of flour there. "Oh. Well, they're here somewhere, I'm sure. They became fairly useless fairly quickly." He turned and squinted in the direction of the microwave. "It just seemed so doable. Thirty-eight steps isn't that complicated when you're working with circuitry. And I'm pretty smart."

"This —" Bond stopped, uncertain of exactly how to address the situation. Did Q try to cook for all of his lovers? (Did this even count as cooking? It looked more like extreme household chemistry.) Or was this a special occasion?

Finally deciding that his clothes needed to go to the dry cleaner's anyway, he put a hand on one bony, flour-covered shoulder. "I have a better idea. Why don't —" He considered Q's current condition and decided that showering alone would be unsafe. Instead of his original proposition, he offered, "Why don't we shower, and then I'll take you for proper brioche?"

Q looked — rather, squinted — at Bond, expression somewhat lost. "Proper brioche is the kind someone makes for you as thanks for being exceptional. With strawberries. And cream cheese. And I don't sleep much, so I thought I could..." He sighed, this time definitely in defeat, and waved his hand. Flour came away from his skin in a gentle cloud, sprinkling down over the destroyed floor.

Jaded as Bond was, there was something touching about the look on Q's floury face, and he felt an unusual sort of affection as he brushed flour out of Q's eyelashes. "If you'd rather, we can pick up brioche and strawberries and cream cheese, and I can feed them to you in bed," he offered, suddenly very glad it was Sunday morning, and neither of them needed to be at the office.

Q sighed and leaned into Bond's hand on his face. "Points for effort, and for it not being your kitchen I've so thoroughly destroyed?" he asked somewhat hopefully. "And I can make tea after the shower. Or coffee if you prefer."

Privately thinking that Q was entirely unsafe to be allowed near either a coffee pot or a tea kettle, Bond leaned down for a somewhat dry, dusty kiss. "Sounds lovely," he lied smoothly, and reached for his sleepy Quartermaster's hand to head back to the shower.


	2. Second Morning

There were certain things that triggered an assassin's reflexes: the distinct front-end view of a gun, the flash of a knife aimed at one's throat, the subtle taste or odour of poison.

Strangely, the relentless beep of an alarm wasn't one of them, and Bond stared up at his ceiling, trying to identify which of his neighbours had left their alarm clock at high volume on a bloody Saturday morning. Surely this warranted an assassination, or at least a bloody kneecapping. He could shoot out a knee with his eyes half-closed and be back in bed in under ten minutes.

He closed his eyes, rolled onto his side, and reached for Q, who —

Wasn't there.

Bond's eyes opened, and he stared at the disarrayed blankets on that side of the bed. A sneaking suspicion crept into his mind as he thought back to last weekend, at the Quartermaster's flat.

Then he thought about his pristine kitchen, done in black granite and stainless steel and ridiculous little halogen lights.

In the next breath, he was out of bed, and he padded quietly through the bedroom and out to the hallway, hoping that he'd rather misread the situation.

In an improvement over last weekend's mishap, Q was at least somewhat dressed in pyjama bottoms and his glasses. He also seemed to be slightly more awake, shaking his arse to some music that Bond couldn't hear. Then again, he might have just been missing it over the sound of the smoke alarm, triggered by smoke rolling from a pan on the stove — a pan that looked dangerously close to spontaneous combustion.

Not that Q would have noticed if it did; he was busy whisking eggs and lip syncing to whatever was playing in the earbuds Bond could now identify as the source of Q's immunity to the racket of the alarm.

Before Bond could move to the stove, however, Q set the bowl of eggs down and turned for the milk, which sat on the counter next to the stove.

"Fuck!" Q yelled, frozen for moment as he stared at the smoke rolling from the stove. "Fucking meat!"

Freed from his momentary, shock-induced paralysis, Bond snatched up a tea towel, picked up what had once been a lovely, unused teflon pan, and sent the pan to its demise in the sink. He turned on the cold water, sending up clouds of steam to compete with the smoke.

Then he caught one of the earbud wires and called, "Q?"

Q turned to stare in horror at Bond, seemingly still frozen. Then he ripped the earbuds out with a wince — a wince that turned into a full body flinch when the alarm finally registered.

Q pulled away from Bond long enough to grab an oven tray from the pans on the shelf next to the dishwasher. He started waving it at the smoke alarm in an effort to disperse the smoke.

"Uh, window?" he yelled over his shoulder.

Bond reached for the vent switch over the hob and turned it on high. Then, with a worried glance at Q — hoping he didn't crack his own skull with the oven tray — he crossed to the balcony doors and threw them open, letting in the chilly, rainy morning air.

On the way back to the kitchen, he picked up one of the dining chairs and set it down under the smoke detector near the kitchen entryway. He stepped up onto the chair and ripped the smoke detector down, figuring any damage he did to drywall or plaster could be repaired by a contractor. Wires snapped free as he nearly went deaf with the bloody thing in his hand. He resisted the temptation to throw it out the balcony doors — at this height, the impact would be fatal for anyone unfortunate enough to be caught underneath it — and instead searched for the battery compartment.

Then, with a last crack of plastic and rip of wires, silence fell.

Q turned away from Bond and bent to slip the oven tray back into the pan rack. He cleared his throat, still not making eye contact with Bond, and walked over to the sink. He stared ruefully down at the pan, which was still smoking menacingly. "I don't suppose you play hockey?" he asked quietly, reaching down to poke at the contents.

Bond laughed and stepped down from the chair. He dropped the gutted smoke detector on the counter and crossed to Q, catching him around the waist as he turned. With his free hand, Bond rescued the dangling earbuds and iPod from the pocket of Q's pyjama bottoms. The music was loud and energetic.

He thought about the disaster that had been his kitchen and the fact that he'd never actually cooked anything in it, other than coffee and tea. He'd only had the flat for a few months, after all.

He thought about suggesting that they clean up, and then he decided that he paid his cleaning service an extortionate amount of money to handle a flat that was only lived-in for half the month. They could earn their keep.

"Come back to bed," he said instead, leaning in to nuzzle at Q's neck. "I'll call in for delivery."

Q wrapped his arms around Bond's waist and groaned. "I honestly thought I could get it right. Eggs and sausage. It's the sausage that did me in, of course. Bloody meat," he groused, voice dripping with disdain over the last sentence. "Literally. Even Kevin Rudolph couldn't get me through it." He squeezed Bond a little tighter and sighed.

"Will you actually _remember_ any of this later, when you wake up?" Bond asked curiously, running his hands down Q's back. Q was slender and fragile, all sharp bones and silk-soft skin, and had no right to be so damned alluring, especially not after destroying a good part of Bond's kitchen, but Bond couldn't find it in himself to be angry. Not at all.

So much for the psych department's statement about anger management issues, he thought smugly.

"Probably not — which explains why I keep letting it happen." The he stepped back and stared accusingly at Bond. "It was the pork. Honestly. That's what I get for trying to..." Q stopped mid-sentence and blinked. "For caving in to..." He looked at the sink, at Bond, then up at the empty, torn spot on the ceiling where the smoke alarm had previously lived. "What the hell was I doing?" he asked, shock colouring his tone of voice. He stared at Bond, blinking, the silence interrupted only by the tinny sounds of high-pitched, fast music.

"Excellent," Bond murmured, latching onto the first two words and disregarding everything else. He picked up Q, who yelped in surprise and clawed at his shoulders, and headed for the nearest appropriate surface — in this case, the overstuffed sofa in the greatroom. A couple of hours of lazy morning snogging was the perfect way to ignore the smell of dissipating smoke and toxic fumes from molten teflon.


	3. Third Morning

"Q? Where the hell —" Bond asked, before he found the motion sensor override switch by the door to Q's office. Lights flickered on, showing a sleepy, dazed Quartermaster lifting his head from the expensive wood executive desk he only used for soldering. His cheek was imprinted with the marks of a circuit board, and a single resistor fell from where it had been stuck to his jaw.

Sleepy-Quartermaster was fast becoming one of Bond's favourite things in the world. The way Q blinked as if he could focus without his glasses was absolutely endearing.

"Mother Russia again? She's such a bitch," Q muttered sleepily before yawning widely. He shook his head, causing the hair on his head to flop ridiculously. "Except in mid-summer of course. Lovely."

None of which actually made any sense, but Bond was coming to expect that sort of thing from Q when newly awakened. "I need your access codes for the server." Bond resisted the urge to go to Q and instead went to his standing-height workstation. A twitch of the mouse woke the thing up, showing a secure login screen. "Username?"

"I was thinking about _zavtrak_," Q continued. He stood from his backless workstation chair, wobbled alarmingly for only a moment, and sleepily made his way over to Bond. He bent over the keyboard and started typing. "Well, except for their love of meat. I think we've already proved that my compromising my morals on that particular issues leads to nothing but disaster and apology trips to hateful places like Boots for replacement pans." He finished typing, and straightened only long enough to find a comfortable place to lean on Bond.

"As far as I'm aware," Bond said as he started to search through the files for any mention of Alec's current mission, "breakfast in Russia involves far less in the way of toxic fumes. Perhaps we should stick with tea and toast?" He glanced at Q and then took one hand from the keyboard to pluck a capacitor out of its nest in his hair. Gravely, he offered it back to Q.

Q took the capacitor and frowned. "Do you have any idea how inefficient a toaster..." He blinked at the capacitor, then grinned up at Bond. "Tea and toast it is!" He turned to his soldering table, picked up a clear plastic case of tools, a bundle of wires, and a handful of components Bond couldn't identify. "Gimme ten. Uh. Twenty." His smile held as he walked past Bond for the door, stopping long enough to plant a light kiss on Bond's cheek. "Maybe thirty, just to be safe."

Another day, Bond might have been worried. Now, he just nodded and went back to searching for any intel he could get on Alec's mission. Bond's intel had revealed that Alec's mission might have been compromised, only his source had died during the very-illegal, not-to-be-done-on-British-soil interrogation, leaving him scrambling to find a way to get in touch with his best friend before time ran out.

Twenty minutes turned into thirty, forty, an hour, and finally, _finally_, Bond found Alec. Thank god he'd made contact with the local station, and the station chief was able to confirm that Alec was safely on a plane, en route back to London, unharmed.

Bond leaned against the workstation and lit a cigarette, not giving a rat's arse about smoking regs. Alec wasn't dead. The mission hadn't been burned. _Thank god_.

He'd just taken his first deep, soothing drag when he heard beeping — that insistent, all-too-familiar beep, only this one was accompanied by a strobing yellow light.

Swearing viciously in Russian, Bond dropped the cigarette on the tile floor and ground it out under his shoe, but the alarm didn't stop. He looked around, wondering just how pissed M would be if Bond caused all of MI-fucking-Six to be evacuated because he'd needed a quick fag. But, no — an alarm down in the Q Branch tunnels wouldn't evac the whole building. The tunnels were only connected through one emergency staircase, two passenger lifts, a cargo lift, and a garage tunnel.

After all, this was Q Branch. They blew things up _all the time_.

So he lit another cigarette before he wandered out, ignoring the blare of the alarms. He needed to thank Q — preferably on any convenient, semi-private horizontal surface — and then go to the airport to pick up Alec and flay him alive for not double-checking his contacts.

Remembering something about toast and tea, he wandered towards the tunnel that served as the nearest Q Branch break room...

Where Q was lying on the floor, screwdriver held up defensively, laughing at a an older woman who was glaring intimidatingly down at him.

"You can't tell me it wasn't a splendid idea," Q said with a chortle. "I can't even remember why I started on this, but the LEDs..."

Bond glanced at where Q was waving. A toaster was lying on its side on the floor beside him, wires curling ominously out of its side, all four bread slots glowing a different colour.

Danielle Marsh, Q Branch second-in-command turned her baleful stare at Bond, who immediately hid the cigarette behind his back. Really, in the grand scheme of things, one cigarette was nothing compared to the smoke curling out of the wall outlet... smoke that, as Bond watched, sparked and started to flare into bright, cheery golden life.

"Fire," he said calmly, nodding at the wall, before it fully registered in his consciousness that the wall outlet was connected to an extension cord which was connected to the toaster which was connected to his narco-engineering lover.

"Pardon," he said to Danielle, handing her his cigarette as he got her out of the way. Then he dove for Q, wrenched Q away from the toaster, and dared to grab hold of the power cord to give it a sharp pull.

The power cord didn't come free; the whole outlet did, from wall plate to wiring to what was apparently a makeshift step-up transformer Q had tucked into the wall cavity, presumably in an effort to increase the power to the toaster.

"James!" Q cried cheerfully. "What are you doing here so late? Did you see what I made? Or, modded, actually." The sizzle and snap of overloading wires finally caught his attention, however, and he turned to stare at the wall. "Oh. That's not good." Then he looked up at the yellow alarm light flashing near the ceiling and frowned.

"James," Danielle said, far less cheerfully.

Q outranked even a senior Double O. Danielle technically didn't, but Bond was only actually intimidated by one person in the break room, and it wasn't his skinny, brilliant lover.

"Yes, ma'am," Bond said, and gently took away Q's screwdriver before ushering Q back to his office so he could get a proper nap, on the sofa.

"I had this brilliant idea, James — did you know that the wires inside toasters are only in lines because toaster engineers are apparently an extremely boring and unimaginative lot? I pulled open the machine and changed the wires to toast '007' into the bread, in a frame. And it will be _brilliant_." He tipped his head to smile sleepily at Bond. "But then I decided, since I already had the toaster open, I might as well make it even _more_ special and give it some colour. But it needed more power than the device was designed to handle. So I had to..." He yawned and swiped ineffectually at the screwdriver in Bond's hand. "Then Danielle got upset. She wouldn't even let me make her some 007 toast. Rather rude, actually," Q huffed.

"You're very sweet," Bond said, just a little dazed by Q's strange declaration of... affection? Narco-affection?

"James!" Danielle called after them.

"Ma'am?"

"Don't put him in his office, James. Remove him from the premises at once. I'd hate to have you both arrested," she threatened.

With a crisp nod, Bond tossed the screwdriver onto the nearest desk and steered Q towards the garage tunnel instead. He'd take Q home — his kitchen hadn't actually been repaired, so there was very little damage Q could do, unless he decided to 'improve' the automatic icemaker in the fridge so he could add flooding to his book of anti-kitchen tactics.


	4. Third Morning (Part Two)

"At that point, I figured, bugger all was going to happen unless I did something," Alec said as he walked tiredly through the door Bond held open for him. "So I rigged the building to blow and got out."

"This whole low-profile kick of Mallory's feels suspiciously like an effort to weed out the..." Bond fell silent as the smell of burnt coffee reached him.

He might have been an old dog, but he was entirely capable of learning new tricks. In this particular case, he'd left his Quartermaster sleeping in the master bedroom after spending two wonderfully distracting hours thanking Q for his (misguided) consideration in the effort of customised toast. Then, thinking it safe, he'd gone to get Alec at the airport.

Apparently 'safe' wasn't meant to be a part of his post-Q life.

Alec was going for the gun he'd illegally transported on the airplane. Bond put out a hand, dropped Alec's bag, and said, "It's Q."

"The Quarter— Oh, right. You're _still_ shagging him?" Alec asked, baffled. "It's been... what, a week and a half?"

"Two," Bond said, heading for the kitchen.

"Christ, that's practically married for you. Are you sick? Are you dying? Do I inherit your flat?"

"Don't make me shoot you myself," Bond said, and stopped in the kitchen doorway.

This time, there was no smoking, molten teflon-sausage mix. There was, however, the remains of a pot of coffee, little more than a caramelised crackling brown coating on the carafe, and a skinny, half-naked Quartermaster on the floor, head pillowed on a stack of tea towels, with what had once been an expensive digital toaster oven gutted beside him.

And there it was. That was definitely affection, that warmth that seemed to fill Bond's chest. He couldn't hide the twitch that was the beginning of a smile. It looked like Q had cannibalised _something_ for parts — possibly the Blu-Ray player.

It took Bond a moment to pull his attention from Q's peaceful face to the remnants of the toaster, but when he did, he saw what looked an old school Apple computer and a joystick. A quick trace of the wires revealed that they were both connected to the toaster.

A Mac 2, a joystick, and a toaster that looked like it belonged in an episode of _Robot Wars_. It didn't glow yet, but when Bond looked for signs of scorching or open flame along the wall where he assumed everything would be plugged in, he realised Q hadn't actually got that far yet. The whole mess was twisted into a colourful braid of wires that snaked its way around and behind Q to end, plugged into a power strip that was itself unplugged several centimetres from the wall.

"What..." Alec began, looking over Bond's shoulder. "What the buggering fuck?"

"Show a little respect. This is the man who gives us our life-saving tech."

"Was that your toaster oven?"

Bond winced. "It _might_ still be," he hazarded, though he had his doubts. He walked into the kitchen and crouched to tap at Q's shoulder. "Q?"

Q groaned and rolled on his back without opening his eyes. "Coffee? Or is it Russia again?"

"You killed my toaster oven. Come on, up you get," Bond said, getting his arms around Q. He resisted the urge to just pick him up again and instead helped him sit. "Let's get you back in bed."

Q yawned and let his head fall forward on Bond's shoulder. "I killed who?" Bond didn't get a chance to respond, however, before Q's body filled with electric tension. He sat up straight so quickly, he nearly knocked heads with the surprised Bond. "Oh! I didn't kill anything! I _improved_."

He turned toward to wall and the unplugged cables and shuffled forward on his knees. He flopped over to pick up the plug to the power strip and straightened unsteadily, still on his knees, in front of the wall. He shuffled the last centimetres he needed to reach the outlet, but his hand hovered in front of it for a brief moment's hesitation. He turned to squint at Bond. "You may want to step back. Just in case."

Bond glanced back at Alec, who was staring, expression trapped between horrified shock and profound amusement. His fierce grin won out, and he slouched against the doorway, arms folded over his chest. "Go on, then. This is brilliant."

"Allow me," Bond said, finally deciding that a brilliant, sleep-deprived genius was a more valuable MI6 resource than a worn-out Double O. Besides, his heart had stopped at least twice that he recalled. A third time wouldn't be anything new.

He took the plug from Q's hand (after a bit of a silly struggle on Q's part) and deliberately stepped away from Q before he stuck the plug in the outlet, hiding his instinctive flinch.

Even Q couldn't hide a surprised grin when nothing happened. He laughed and very lightly punched Bond in the leg. "Oh, ye of little faith," he said before he shuffled back to the Mac 2. He turned it on with a flip of an invisible switch, then moved to the toaster as the old computer hummed to life. He tipped it upright, looking critically at the internal components before screwing the side panel back on.

"Bread?" he asked in the same tone Bond had heard him use on lower-level Q Branch techs when requested assistance. Now, he held one hand expectantly, the other busy checking wires inside the bread slots.

Bond refused to cede his tactically sound spot by the outlet, where he could quickly intervene in the likely event of a disaster. "Alec?"

"Right. Morning, Q," Alec said as he finally ventured onto the battlefield. He reached over the electronics on the floor to flip open the sleek stainless steel breadbox. "White sandwich bread, James? Really?" he criticised, tossing the plastic-wrapped half-loaf aside. Instead, he took out the loaf of garlic-parmesan artisan bread Bond had bought in anticipation of an Italian dinner — he _refused_ to entertain the word 'romantic' — with Q later that night.

"Good with peanut butter but not much else," Q muttered. "Wait. Is that 006?" He unfolded his long legs from his kneeling position to shift into a cross-legged one in front of the Mac, tossing a quick look behind him to nod at Alec. "Welcome home, agent," he said with a yawn.

"Thanks." Alec took the serrated bread knife from the block and started sawing off pieces.

Bond hid his sigh. He'd pick up a fresh loaf later today when he went out to buy replacements for whatever Q destroyed. Alec passed Q two slices of bread. Nibbling on the end, he went to the coffee pot and picked it up, eyeing the crackle-glaze of coffee residue at the bottom suspiciously.

"Remember that program I was telling you about last week? The one I was designing to be more anticipatory of your needs when running through buildings with locked doors?" Q stretched to reach for the bread, and took them with another yawn. He slid them into the bread slots and pushed down the button with no hesitation. "I've been having some trouble with it. In theory, it should be a simple matter of running an algorithm that calculates your speed and progress through the building, flagging and unlocking doors as you approach. In reality, the tests give us an excellent success rate, but with an error margin of plus or minus ten seconds. Which is a hell of a long time when you're running from the armed and angry sorts you usually have trailing you."

The Mac 2 finally flared to life in all its CRT glory, and the blue screen reflected oddly in Q's glasses as he grinned and pulled the joystick towards him.

"Does this have something to do with toast?" Alec asked as he ran the water in the sink. He stuck the carafe under, and it promptly shattered.

Reflexively, both assassins twitched. Q looked around at the floor in his immediate vicinity, as if searching for something. Then he looked up at Alec, surprised, and back to Bond. "It wasn't me," he said seriously before yawning yet again.

"Did _you_ make coffee before leaving for the airport?" Alec asked Bond.

"I stopped at the cafe in the terminal, but I also haven't been asleep yet," Bond admitted, watching Q a bit suspiciously. The coffee pot was a minor price to pay for having a sleepy, _ridiculously_ adorable Quartermaster in his life. A major electrical fire in the kitchen, though, might be beyond the reach of his insurance premium. The kitchen wall was shared with another flat, he suspected.

Alec turned off the tap, leaving the glass shards in the sink. Belatedly, he flipped the power switch on the coffee maker. "So, is this where I ask why there's a bloody computer hooked up to the toaster oven, or should I just go have a shower and assume the flat will burn down while I'm gone?"

"Predictability algorithms, progress, end goals... simple calculations that need tightening." Q did something with the joystick, and the Mac's blue screen disappeared, replaced quickly with an old Atari logo. After a few minutes, Centipede came on, and Q started playing it with more vigour than Bond would have expected from someone who was all but sleepwalking. Sleep game-playing? Bond shook his head and watched as Q systematically took out the centipede.

"It's not the same without a roller ball for a controller, but it's really about the unlocking program, isn't it?" Q muttered quietly. He killed a spider and blew off the digital creature's tail and, finally, destroyed the last two individual sections that were running around. The game played its endgame music through what looked like a portable, collapsible speaker, and Q laughed.

"Victory!" he shouted as he flopped backwards, head thunking loudly on the tile. He gestured with one hand to the toaster, and less than a second later, the pieces of bread popped up.

Q frowned at the blackened bread. "Four seconds late and burnt, but a good start," he said thoughtfully. He rubbed the back of his head with his free hand and looked up at Bond. "What do you think?"

There was no possible way he could answer that question without risking his budding relationship with the brilliant, erratic Quartermaster. Thankfully, Alec was more than willing to leap to Bond's defence.

"That's absolutely ingenious," he declared, extending a hand to Q. As soon as Q clasped his hand, Alec hauled him to his feet. Bond leaped forward to help hold him up (unplugging the toaster before he got out of reach) and caught Q around the waist. "Well done, Q. Really." Alec clapped his shoulder.

"You'll need to tell us about it," Bond added, "_after_ you've slept."

"For about three days," Alec muttered.

Q looked from Alec to Bond, disappointment blooming on his face. "It was calculating the final moment of game over, and timing the toast to finish at the same time. Door, agent. Same thing."

"You're a genius," Bond reassured him, kissing his cheek. At least this time there were neither flour nor electronics componentry to get in his way. "Just a bit of upgrading for the code and you're done, right? You can do that later. Alec will be staying here today, so don't go wandering into the guest room," he added, herding Q towards the kitchen door.

"No need to humour me," Q sighed. "It's fine. You're right. I'll repair the toaster and call Sue to come fetch her components back. If I know her, she'll use the improvised program to do something horrible to students in her welding class during their designing sessions." He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and started typing in a text. "Good night, Trevelyan."

Bond took away the mobile. "It'll be brilliant, once you refine it," he said, tossing the mobile on the counter. He didn't bother to lock it; that would just be incentive for Alec to try and hack the unlock code. "And it's ten in the morning. Is that why you made coffee?" he asked thoughtlessly before realising _the whole pot_ had been emptied. "My god, did you drink it all?"

"Do you think that if I had hooked it up to something, _anything_ not breakfast related, I would have had more success?" Q asked. "Like, a crock pot? No, that wouldn't work. A panini grill maybe?"

"You did, didn't you?" Bond asked, wondering precisely how he could gently bring Q down from a caffeine-high. The circles under his eyes were dark, and though he looked as if he could fall asleep at any moment, it would undoubtedly be a restless, twitchy nap rather than anything healthier.

He hugged Q close and led him out of the kitchen, towards the master bedroom. "Alec, will you —"

"Already on it," Alec called back over the sound of glass rattling in the sink.

"And _you're_ going to bed," Bond told Q. "We can discuss kitchen upgrades when we go shopping tonight."

"Kitchen upgrade shopping?" Q asked, a little bit of excitement creeping into his voice even as he let his head fall on Bond's shoulder in exhaustion. "You're going to go with me to a building full of things to love and blow up?"

"I'd been thinking another loaf of bread, since Alec will have eaten that one before he even gets in the shower," Bond said with a quiet laugh. He pushed open the master bedroom door and ushered Q through. "But yes, if you'd like. Just don't blow up anything while we're still in the store."

"I made toast," Q said proudly.

"That you did."


	5. Fifth Time Isn't the Charm

"It's morning," Bond murmured into the back of Q's neck, petting one hand down over ribs pressed against fine, pale skin. Q's heart was still pounding, breath coming in little gasps. "You can tell Mallory you've successfully managed to distract me from killing that bastard through the entire bloody night, now that he's safely off British soil."

"Is that what I was doing?" Q asked with a breathless chuckle. "Well, that story works for me. I forgot all about the murderous, traitorous bastard as soon as you..." Q waved a hand aimlessly in the air. "With your tongue." He rolled towards Bond and tucked one skinny knee in between Bond's legs. "I _was_ planning on tracking him to make sure he stayed far, far away, but right now it seems like too much bloody effort." He snuggled closer.

Bond shifted over onto his back and pulled Q on top. "Maybe I should go freelance. Then I could kill him without worrying about rubbish like diplomatic immunity. The world would thank me. I'd be like that American serial killer from the telly."

"Except he doesn't get paid, just hunted," Q pointed out. "I could find lots of interesting ways to make your target's life hell, though. Put him on Anon's most wanted. Circulate his photo through the bounty hunter community once he lands in America." He reached over to thread his fingers through Bond's, and grinned impishly. "Ooh, I know. Have him listed in the personal ads for loving to be whipped in Central Park randomly by a stranger in full leather."

"I don't know what's worse. That you thought of that after we spent half the night shagging, or that I think it's incredibly sexy. And adorable," Bond said, reaching up to ruffle his fingers through the disaster that was Q's hair. It had been a mess when they'd finally left MI6 just before midnight; now, Bond doubted Q would get a comb through it. Then again, he wasn't certain Q even owned one. "But I need more coffee and possibly some pastries from the corner cafe before we discuss that further."

Q smiled sleepily, then leaned in to kiss Bond lightly before pulling away. "You shower." He rolled off Bond and reached for his trousers on the floor, wild hair sticking up everywhere. "I'm going to check my email before we go."

Grinning, Bond snatched at the trousers to try and tug them away. "Or you could check your email and then join me."

Whether it was exaggerated, or whether Bond's strength against the incredibly thin Q was too much for him, Q followed the tug of the trousers down to fall with a laugh over Bond. "If I do that, all the good pastries as going to be gone because will not have beat the after-church crowd. It's Sunday, and the people who go to the church down the road descend like locusts at eleven."

Bond wrestled Q under himself, thinking that the trousers definitely needed to stay off. However, a toothbrush and the toilet were also priorities, so he satisfied himself with a brief kiss before he rolled over Q and stood up on his side of the bed. A quick grab gave him possession of the trousers, which he pointedly threw in the corner of the room.

"We'll stay in. I have eggs and bread, I think, and if not, we'll just order in," he decided. "Shower, five minutes?"

"Such a demanding lover," Q chastised, though he didn't go for the trousers again. "Five minutes," he agreed, expression turning thoughtful and perhaps a little wicked. When he caught Bond staring, he shrugged a single shoulder and took a few steps backwards toward the door, smile never leaving his face. "I am a little hungry now, though. I'm just going to check what's in the fridge first."

"If we're missing anything, call Alec. It's his fault. I know he was here yesterday afternoon. Probably didn't bother going grocery shopping for himself," Bond called into the hallway as he headed for the en suite.

He started the shower before he used the toilet and took his toothbrush from the cup where it sat next to Q's. He stared at the second toothbrush for a long, quiet moment, waiting for the awkward, territorial snarl to rise up inside him, but it didn't. Somehow, his skinny little Quartermaster had carved out a place in Bond's life. Not a big one — not yet. A toothbrush by the sink, a drawer of pants and socks and T-shirts, spare glasses in the living room, an extra mobile phone charger on the table by Q's side of the bed...

Q's _own_ side of the bed. With the memory foam pillow he preferred.

Bond smiled very faintly, thinking he'd done damned well for himself, all things considered. Why the hell Q wanted _him_, he had no idea. Q could have anyone he chose. He was kind, brilliant, and gorgeous enough to carry off his bland wardrobe with style. And yet, he wanted _Bond_.

Well, everyone had their moments of insanity and their weaknesses. Apparently Bond was Q's.

He brushed his teeth, and if his grin was a little silly when he put his toothbrush next to Q's, at least no one was there to witness it. He got into the shower to wash his hair quickly, before Q could finish his kitchen inventory and join him. Q loved to play fair, which meant that if Bond indulged himself washing Q's hair for ten minutes, Q insisted on doing the same — which was ridiculous with Bond's military-short haircut. Best to get it out of the way first.

As he was rinsing out the shampoo, he heard the bedroom door bang open, followed by a shout: _"James!"_

_Q_.

Adrenaline burst through his veins as he pushed open the shower door. He didn't break into a run only because he couldn't chance falling and cracking open his skull on the marble floor. He hit the bathroom door in under two seconds, wrenched it open, and got one step out just in time to see Q run in through the bedroom door, a look of grim determination on his face. He headed for Bond's side of the bed instead of his own and yanked the drawer open.

Q's bedside drawer was filled with any number of things from headphones to tools to eyedrops to random circuitry to condoms and lube.

Unlike Bond's, which held only one thing at any given moment: his handgun.

Bond had only a moment to run towards Q, briefly admiring the way Q settled into his shooting stance exactly the way Bond had taught him. Then Q was followed by a ridiculously well-built specimen of a man, who was also armed and taking aim at Q.

Bond's instinct was to throw himself in front of the shooter's path, but he knew he'd never make it. He had one momentary pang of terror and regret, because there was _nothing he could do_, before his training took over.

But then it was too late, because Q — the skinny little Quartermaster who'd never seen battle and had never fired a weapon outside the controlled environment of a shooting range — didn't hesitate. He fired as he'd been taught: one shot to centre of mass, correct aim, fire again.

The enemy, whoever the fuck it was, fired an instant too late, as if he'd hesitated in disbelief that Q would actually shoot. Q's first shot fouled his aim, and the round went wide.

Bond rushed at the attacker, who was already going down, staggering backwards into the hallway. "Q!" he shouted, throwing one quick glance his way. He saw no blood, and as much as his instincts were screaming for him to go to his lover, he needed to control the situation first.

"Uh, right!" Q yelled, jumping onto and over the bed to get at his drawer this time.

If he was unharmed enough for that, he was fine, Bond told himself, and continued for the attacker in the hallway.

The man was down, coughing up blood, slumped back against the accent table that Bond had never particularly liked. Bond disarmed him with ease; his effort to aim his weapon was laughable with two substantial holes in his chest. Thoughts of taking the man in alive and interrogating him crossed into and out of Bond's mind, replaced by the sharp, vicious territorial thought that _he'd shot at Q_.

Carefully, Bond put the man's gun down on the accent table.

Seconds later, Q rushed out of the bedroom, holding a ragged bundle of cable ties like a bizarre plastic bouquet. "If you —" was as far as he got before the _snap_ of bone silenced him as Bond neatly broke the attacker's neck.

"Well, I suppose you won't need these after all," Q said after a moment of shocked stillness. He dropped the cable ties to the floor and stared down at the intruder. "Who the _hell_ is that? I always thought my first kill would be someone well-known — more evil genius, less steroided gym bunny in a cheap suit."

Bond stepped back, thinking that Q had just seen him kill. Oh, he'd heard it before, but he'd never _witnessed_ the abrupt, brutal shock of what Bond's job entailed.

But he wasn't flinching away. There was shock, yes — rapid breathing, wide eyes, unusually pale complexion — but he was holding himself together.

It only now registered that Q was naked — they both were — and that he couldn't see a hint of blood anywhere on Q, except for his feet, where he'd stepped in the puddles left by the now-dead assailant. Carefully, Bond reached for him, needing to reassure himself with touch as well as sight that Q was unharmed.

Instead of stepping away like Bond expected him to, Q seemed almost grateful for the offered comfort. He nearly fell into Bond's embrace, shivering slightly. "Bastard caught me off guard," he said darkly, gaze still focused on the body.

Bond turned Q away and herded him into the bedroom. His mind was racing, but it was twisted around on the same path: _Q, danger, protect Q_. He gave himself the luxury of five seconds to bury his face against Q's neck, feeling the strong, fast pulse beating against his cheek, before he reluctantly eased his embrace.

"I need to call this in. The police may already be on their way. We'll probably want trousers for this," he said regretfully.

"There go my plans for a perfectly decadent morning," Q said regretfully, the arm still tight around Bond's waist at odds with his flippant tone. Then he looked up sharply, towards the doorway, with a muttered, "Oh, fuck."

Bond took a breath and caught an all-too-familiar odour, just as the newly replaced kitchen smoke alarm started to chirp.

He tightened his arms around Q's body and said, "Don't tell me. You decided to surprise me with breakfast after the shower?"

"I'm fucking cursed," Q groaned, ducking to hide his face in Bond's neck. "At least this time it wasn't _only_ my fault."

"I'll just increase my insurance policy. You call the Met. Pull rank on them — you'll enjoy it. I'll deal with the kitchen."

Q nodded, face still tucked against Bond's skin. After a long, silent moment during which Bond could almost feel Q's heart rate slow to closer to normal levels, Q finally stepped back and straightened. "Mobile's in my trousers pocket," he muttered to himself before spotting and walking over to his jeans. He shook them, pulled them on, then pulled the mobile out of his pocket. He glanced at the body one last time before sitting in the middle of the bed, legs crossed, back pointedly towards the mess.

Bond heard the numbers as Q dialled, and left him to attend to the kitchen. He had to step over the corpse in the hallway to get there, and he thought rather viciously that this surely had to do with his 'diplomatic' target, now safely out of the country. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise.

If Mallory had just let him kill the bastard...

But there was no point in thinking that, Bond reminded himself as he picked up a dining chair and carried it to the kitchen smoke alarm. Sure enough, a glance showed eggs — now reaching a volcanic stage similar to obsidian glass — smoking merrily on the hob.

At least the contractors hadn't been in yet to paint the ceiling where it had been previously repaired.

Poor Q, he thought as he climbed up onto the chair to rip down the smoke alarm. He really had no luck with breakfast.


	6. Perseverance Pays Off

Bond woke to the sound of the oven door creaking open, and a delighted peal of laughter from Q. The smell of cinnamon filled the air, but Bond didn't have a chance to dwell on it before nearly six feet of whipcord thin Quartermaster was collapsing on top of him, hair sticking everywhere, eyes bright, grin irrepressible.

"Good morning," Q said in a quiet, calm voice that was completely at odds with his nearly manic body language. "Did you sleep well?"

"You are too bloody sneaky," Bond murmured, pulling his arms up without taking them from under the bedsheets. A quick twist let him wrap Q in the sheet before he flipped them both over. He grinned down at Q and reached up to pluck away his glasses. "How long have you been up? And why didn't you wake me?" he asked, leaning down to press his lips to Q's stubbled jaw.

"I couldn't sleep at all last night," Q confessed, tipping his jaw up and threading a hand through Bond's short hair. "I ended up reading and watching YouTube videos about half the night with headphones in so I wouldn't wake you." He turned his head to capture Bond's mouth in a quick kiss before he pulled back. "Go ahead. Ask me what I watched YouTube videos on and read about all night."

"What videos" — Bond moved his kisses up to Q's earlobe — "were you watching" — and inched down to flick his tongue against Q's pulse — "instead of spending the night" — he kissed and then nipped gently — "in bed with me?"

Q groaned happily and pulled Bond down for a full kiss, despite Bond's not having had the chance to brush his teeth yet. Q explored Bond's mouth thoroughly, and it took only a moment for him to realise that Q tasted not of toothpaste, but of cinnamon and sugar.

"Chemistry," Q said when he pulled back. "And the thermodynamics of an average London flat cooktop. Well, not just the range, but the oven, too. Deeply informative, I found it."

Bond's momentary anxiety passed as he verified that the flat was silent — no smoke alarm — and was slowly filling with the odour of sweet cinnamon, rather than anything more charred. He grinned, looking down into Q's bright eyes, and said, "Clever little bastard, aren't you?"

Q opened his mouth to respond, but an insistent beeping filled the air. Q grinned and pushed Bond off him. "Did you know they have kitchen timer apps?" he asked as he sprang out of bed.

Bond rolled onto his back. "I've never had anyone rush out of bed with me because of a bloody app before!" he yelled, snickering at Q's delightful enthusiasm. He got out of bed more slowly and went to the bathroom, thinking he had about two minutes before Q came bursting back in to show him whatever he'd created.

God, he hoped nothing had gone wrong with it. He hated to see disappointment on Q's face — especially when he was so proud of all the effort he'd put into his work.

Just over ninety seconds passed before Bond made it out to the kitchen, wearing pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt purely as self-defence against any errant splatters.

Q looked up from a bowl where he was mixing something sticky and white together, and smirked at Bond's clothing choices. "Only the oven, this time. Not the hob." Then he pointed the drippy spoon at the tiny kitchen table. "Two minutes. Sit?"

"How about I make coffee?" Bond offered, eyeing the spoon of what he suspected was icing. It was the thick, decadent stuff that was nothing more than sugar and milk, and his thoughts were the type that had nothing to do with the kitchen and everything to do with needing to change the sheets once they were out of that icing.

"Already done," Q said nonchalantly as he cast a glance over at the pot. "Metal was a good choice for a replacement." He began to pour a thick stream of icing over the pan, moving from side to side. When he finished, he righted the bowl, swiped a finger along the icing that dripped over the edge, and stuck the finger in his mouth.

Bond stared, openly and avariciously.

Unaware of the effect he was having, Q set down the bowl and fetched dessert plates and mugs. He made it halfway to the table before he turned back and added a couple of forks to the table. Then he walked over to Bond and deposited everything on the table with a triumphant look.

Bond sat and caught at Q's wrist to tug him close. "You're wonderful, you know," he said, reaching to pull Q down for a quick, heartfelt kiss.

"So he says when something finally turns out right." Q chuckled and turned back to the hob and picked up the pan he'd just poured icing into. He set it on the table between them, and Bond looked down to see the pan was full of picture-perfect cinnamon rolls. "The one in the middle or one of the ones on the edge," Q asked playfully.

"All right, how'd you manage it?" Bond teased, getting up. When Q looked up at him, he said, "Coffee. Stay. And explain this... perfection."

"Demonic ritual. Blood sacrifice. Salt circle. And finally learning the science behind the magic." Q watched Bond move toward the coffee pot. "And the incredible patience of a humouring partner."

Bond picked up the metal carafe, noting that the coffee pot was already powered off — a safety feature that had figured prominently in his choice of this particular model. He brought it to where Q sat and filled both mugs.

He set the pot down and lifted his hand to comb his fingers through Q's hair. "Apparently, I'm willing to indulge you in damned near anything you want," he observed, wondering when that had suddenly become acceptable. Before Q, Bond had always been stubborn and domineering — not in an abusive way, but there was something about him that definitely was... territorial.

"It's a good thing I'm completely reasonable," Q said. He turned slightly to Bond, arms wrapping tightly around Bond's waist.

Bond leaned down to press a kiss to the top of Q's head. "You set my kitchen on fire twice, rewired two innocent toasters, and shot a man in my hallway. You're completely mad in the most perfect way."

Q nodded, face pressed into Bond's stomach. "Thank you for putting up with me. Any chance I can reward you by moving this into the bedroom?"

There it was again, that tight warmth that spread through his chest. It should have been suffocating, but he could breathe easier with it than without. "Did you save any of that icing?" he hinted slyly, though his voice lacked its usual sharp edge.

"I made extra," Q said with quiet smokiness. He chuckled, voice low and seductive, and pressed his lips against Bond's stomach.

With a gentle tug on Q's hair, Bond leaned down to steal another kiss, closing his eyes for a moment as the affection threatened to overwhelm him. "You get the icing. I'll cover the rolls and bring in our coffee, for afterwards."

Q laughed, stood to get the bowl of icing, licked the spoon seductively, and led the way back to the bedroom.


End file.
